webbles

The idea behind it was taught multiple times by Joseph Smith and later prophets. The phrase "calling and election made sure" is from 2 Peter 1:10. Here's a talk (written down by James Burgess) from Joseph in 1844 where he basically says the same thing that D&C 132 says - https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/discourse-10-march-1844-as-reported-by-james-burgess/5 It talks about making your calling and election sure, having it sealed, and also that it seals you against all sin except murder. Here's another one from 1839 (recorded by Willard Richards) - https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/discourse-between-circa-26-june-and-circa-2-july-1839-as-reported-by-willard-richards/3 It doesn't talk about murder, but it does talk about the Holy Spirit of promise and calling & elections being made sure. Not all General Authorities get the Second Anointing and you don't have to be a General Authority to get it. There was a Stake President who left the church and he had received it and divulged what occurred. The leaders of the church have gone back and forth on whether more people or less people should get it. This verse states that to be sealed is done through an authorized servant. It also can be reasonably interpreted to say that the sealing can only be broken if the sealed commits cold-blooded murder as we all "abide in our covenants" as we constantly break them every day. (i.e. There are none among us who fully live the covenant to live the law of consecration.) What do you think "abide in our covenants" means? Whatever definition you give it, just add "don't murder" to the list and you are guaranteed a golden ticket to the Celestial Kingdom. Also please consider and reconcile this verse for me: Am I to understand this to be a different sealing power than what is used in the baptismal sealing and/or the temple sealing sealing? Based on the above two quoted canonized texts it appears to me that God gives power to authorized servants to seal and what they seal is bound "as above, so below" and that, outside of the people's response to the authorized servant, what is bound is bound until the authorized servant says otherwise and has no other bearing on one's personal righteousness before God. I understand it quoted Mormon Doctrine. There are things in that book that are good and things that are bad. The fact that another publication from the church (lesson manual for "Preparing for an Eternal Marriage") quotes this specific part from it makes it look like this specific part is fine. We use the term "sealing" for a lot of different things. There are things that require someone with sealing keys to do (such as marriage). There are things that really have nothing to do with eternity (Like Nephi being able to seal the heavens and cause famine). There are things that the Holy Spirit of Promise seals (such as baptism and every other covenant). There are things that sometimes needs a person with the sealing key and sometimes doesn't (such as children; my children are sealed to me and no one was present with the sealing keys when they were born). So, discussing "sealing" is hard for me since it is a generic term that encompasses several different things. But a "marriage sealing" is sealing two people together so that they can come forth in the resurrection and take their place in the Celestial Kingdom. And just because you got sealed at the temple doesn't mean that the sealing is permanent. That only happens once it is sealed by the Holy Spirit of Promise. Because we can still break our own sealing. For "parent-children sealings", I'm not exactly sure why it is needed. It is probably one of the most important sealings we have since Moroni mentioned it to Joseph, Elijah restored it, and we do a lot of geneology for it. But what does this sealing do and why? I think it might have to do with the idea that sealed children will somehow be saved easier, though I expect everyone to be sealed at some point so I'm not sure how that fits in. I'm a bit of a universalist (I believe God is really good at rescuing His children) so the idea that a sealing link all the way back to Adam to make it easier for us to accept Christ fits fine with me. For "baptism sealing", it is only between us and the Holy Spirit of Promise. No other person is involved. No sealing keys are needed. Only priesthood authority to have a valid baptism and then it is up to us to keep our covenants. In 2 Samuel 12:8, Nathan says "And I gave thee thy master’s house, and thy master’s wives into thy bosom, and gave thee the house of Israel and of Judah; and if that had been too little, I would moreover have given unto thee such and such things." For me, that looks like Nathan did give David wives. So those wives were fine. But when he took an unlicensed wife (Bethsheba), then he crossed the line. So for me, the two are in sync. Not all of his wives were abominable but some were. Also Jacob is talking about both David and Solomon and Solomon took a lot more wives and concubines than he was authorized. Yes, completely agree. If you think polygamy is a mistake, then that is fine with me. I disagree with it but it is a valid belief.

D&C 132 is talking about getting your "calling and election made sure" which has several other scriptural connections. So for me, it fits quite nicely. Being sealed in the temple isn't enough to get that promise. It says you need to be sealed by the "Holy Spirit of Promise" which doesn't happen immediately. And we even have another ordinance called the "second anointing" which is kind of the follow on to a marriage sealing. You mentioned marriage sealings and children sealings and second anointing sealings. Those are different types of sealings. So each one is different in how it works. Even our baptism has to be sealed by the Holy Spirit of Promise - https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/manual/eternal-marriage-student-manual/holy-spirit-of-promise?lang=eng. The marriage sealing requires one member of each sex but most sealings don't require that. It only contradicts it if you read it one way. And I've read lots of attempts to explain that "one way" and none of them make sense to me. So I disagree that it *directly* contradicts. Additionally, it is acceptable for prophets to contradict previous prophets. See the Law of Circumcision being repealed in both New Testament and Book of Mormon. Or Peter being told to eat unclean food. Or Nephi being told to kill. I don't expect it to happen frequently, but there is enough recorded incidents to how that it does happen.

I believe the normal interpretation of D&C 1:30 is that when it says "not individually" that is talking about individual people, not individual churches. I don't think the entire verse makes any sense if it is talking about other churches that don't accept Joseph Smith or the Book of Mormon. He talks about laying the foundation of the church (so a new church, not a previous one) and it being the "only true and living church". So not sure how another church that already existed would be referenced at the end.

The exact quote is also near the end of a decent length talk at General Conference in 1890. Here's an online version of the talk - https://archive.bookofmormoncentral.org/sites/default/files/archive-files/pdf/woodruff/2023-06-22/president_woodruffs_manifesto.pdf. It also includes a talk from George Q. Cannon which is also kind of similar to what Wilford Woodruff talks about. They aren't talks about "listen to us and obey us", they are talks about trying to convince the members. They talk about praying and faith and reasons why the manifesto is correct. They are trying to get the people to listen to God so that He can tell them in mind and heart that it is absolutely correct. It always bothers me that we sometimes use snippets like that ("The Lord will never permit me ...") and miss the rest of the context of the talk. The foundation is to listen to God and follow Him. If He tells us that the prophets are His spokespeople, than we can trust God that He will keep the prophets inline.

That's a cool piece of trivia. Here's an online version of the talk - https://www.scribd.com/document/106979967/Richards-Stephen-L-Bringing-Humanity-to-the-Gospel-1932-Conf-Talk.

I just found this announcement - https://www.churchhistorianspress.org/article/newsletter/2025-september. A few months old but we are actually going to get the journals. They've been working the past 8 years, they've been transcribing the journals and they will be published by Yale. I hope they also include photographs of the diaries. But this has the potential to change several theories about early polygamy. If the journals look to be edited later on, then a lot of the contemporary evidence of Joseph's polygamy is gone. But if it wasn't edited, we'll have solid contemporary evidence.

"spiritual wifery" is having a sexual relationships without being married. John C Bennet is what triggered a lot of the statements against spiritual wifery. The two situations are very different. In the polygamy crackdown, the women were trying to protect their husbands and sister-wives. And I don't believe they outright lied, they just obstructed the case by not testifying or saying they can't remember. The testimonies of the women who said they were wives of Joseph Smith were not trying to protect anyone nor where they try to obstruct the case. In fact, the case had nothing to do with the church or with the women. The two parties were RLDS and the Church of Christ (Temple Lot). The only reason the women were asked to testify was that the Church of Christ was trying to prove that the RLDS were not the true inheritors of Joseph Smith because they didn't practice polygamy which Joseph had taught. So, there was not much incentive to lie. Additionally, the testimonies from the Temple Lot case is only a part of the evidence that Joseph practiced polygamy.

Marriages in the early US didn't really have "state authority". You could marry someone in your community and never get a license from the state or any other approval. For instance, the case I mentioned where a woman married another man to have children for her first husband, the marriage was not by "state authority" nor was it a sealing. There aren't any records of the marriage except through family histories. And we do know a lot about sealings. I think the only hang ups are very, very few. A few from Joseph's time and a few from Brigham's time. Other than that, a sealing was a marriage. I 100% agree that Joseph denied polygamy in all public statements. I don't think anyone doubts that. There is not a lot of contemporary documents that tie Joseph to polygamy. And most of that isn't in the Joseph Smith Papeers (William Clayton's journal has most of it which I know some people think was edited so we just have to wait and see if the church ever releases them). But there is a lot more evidence after his death and I find it really hard to ignore that evidence because of the breadth and scope. For a random instance, R. C. Evans was a member of the RLDS First presidency. He served with Joseph Smith III. He has no first hand experience of Joseph Smith (he was born in 1876) but interacted with men who did have first hand experience. He was adamantly against polygamy and even wrote books against it and denounced Brigham and the Utah church. He left the RLDS because he came to believe that Joseph actually did practice polygamy and he was angry that the RLDS didn't denounce Joseph for his sins. He came to this conclusion with talking to men who personally knew Joseph and who had no problems saying that Joseph had practiced polygamy. These are men who did not go to Utah and who hated polygamy. Also, I've noticed you mentioned women accusing Joseph. For me, that is an odd way to put it. I don't believe they ever accused him. They didn't go out of their way to say Joseph was a polygamist. If it wasn't for Joseph III's mission back to Utah or the attempt by the RLDS to own the Independence temple lot or the curiosity of Andrew Jenson, we probably would know very little of his polygamy. Some of those marriages were probably sealing only with no earthly expectation. But some probably did have earthly expectations. Sarah Ann Whitney is one of the later. She was sealed/married to Joseph before her marriage to Joseph C Kinsgbury. And he left a journal that was written shortly after Joseph's death (so really close to contemporaneous) where he describes the arrangement he had with Joseph to be a "supposed husband" (https://archive.org/details/journal-of-joseph-c-kingsbury/page/n15/mode/2up). And many of those women were sealed to Joseph posthumously in the Nauvoo Temple with sometimes their husband standing in place or other men. And the sealing ceremony in the Nauvoo Temple was like the modern sealings, where it assumed earthly marriage. For instance, Sylvia Session was married to Windsor Lyons. He was endowed in the Nauvoo Temple on Feb 3 1846. Sylvia was endowed on Dec 16 1845 (https://archive.org/details/nauvoo-sealings-adoptions-and-anointings/page/190/mode/2up). Instead of being sealed to her legal husband, she was sealed to Joseph with Heber C Kimball standing in place. Why did she choose to be sealed to Heber instead of Windsor? Especially since he was a faithful member who got his endowment shortly afterward. We don't know but I think it points to Joseph's sealing to be more marriage like than just a sealing. As for a term, I would call it polyandrous marriages since it as a woman with more than two husbands.

I just read the next article about the periodic table, the one called "rise of medicium" and she is either intentionally conflating elements and molecules to prove her point or she doesn't know the difference between the two. She talks about how a new element is discovered "medicium" and describes the process. I'm assuming this is a made up element since searching for the name only finds her blog post. But she talks about using some chemical experiments to discover a new element and then getting it approved as a new element and getting a spot on the periodic table. If we discovered a new element that way in the last 50 years, it would be huge. It would either be the discovery of the fabled "zone of stability" or rewrite the periodic table. The last element that was not manufactured as byproducts of fusion, fision, or bombardment was in 1939. She seems to be ignoring how elements were discovered historical. Sure, they were done through chemical reactions but it was an attempt by those at the time (who weren't really even scientists) to explain what they were seeing. The periodic table came into existence in 1869 and only 25 elements were discovered since then (ignoring all the manufactured ones that almost never exist on Earth naturally). None of them were discovered to get a special grid on the periodic table. Most of those aren't in any supplements. They weren't discovered to make money, but to explain things. And this quote is shocking to me: She is trying to explain that oxygen doesn't really exist. That instead, it is just a label for an observation. And I would 100% agree with her if this is the only way we observe oxygen. But we've been able to extract oxygen out of non air things (such as water which she also doesn't believe is composed of hydrogen or oxygen and rocks). And we know it is oxygen because if we take the thing that we extract from air and the thing we extract from water and the thing we take from minerals and run a battery of tests against this thing, it all acts the same. So it has to be the same thing. The name oxygen even comes from the idea that it is found in all acids so many of the first experiments were around liquids, not air. Yes, we are labeling what we observed, but why is that a problem?

When you say "I could easily imagine Brigham doing away with the practice of marriage and only doing sealings in the ghost-state of Deseret", do you mean that a husband and wife would be sealed in the temple but not have any sort of marriage ceremony? Because I don't know what you mean by "doing away with the practice of marriage". It was really common to get married first before going to the temple. There is even the famous "honeymoon trail" (https://www.blm.gov/visit/honeymoon-trail) which goes from Arizona and Mexico up to the St. George temple. It is called "honeymoon trail" because new couples would get married before making the trip and so they honeymoon was the trail. Also, quite a lot of people would get married, divorced, and remarried. I have a family ancestor who was married on the trip to Utah (as his 4th wife), he died, she remarried (as a second wife), then divorced him, and then married one more time. Only the first marriage was sealed. The other two were not. A problem with this, in my mind, is I don't believe there was hardly anyone married to multiple women who were not also sealed to them unless they were sealed to another man. I do know of a case where the woman wasn't sealed yet to anyone but was married to a man as a quasi-wife for a few years to have children for her original husband (he was sterile) but that situation was odd and I don't know of any other situation like that. So during the polygamy years, being married polygamously also meant being sealed. It was possible to be sealed and not to live as "husband and wife" but many of those were still considered married (Brigham had several of those and they still were treated as his wives). Joseph is harder because we don't know if he treated it as marriage or not. Some of the women say he did treat it as marriage but some say he didn't. But was that just because he was figuring things out and didn't have it out in the open?

Thanks. I'll look at those books. I haven't read them yet. I'm really curious about the post 1904 marriages. And for me, "with authority" means that they weren't excommunicated or shunned by the community. I haven't heard of any marriages in the 1920s that didn't trigger excommunication so I'm curious about that. I have heard of a few in the earlier 1910s that were accepted.

What is the separation between Plural Marriage and Polygamy?

No problem. I very much enjoy learning about polygamy and have quite a lot of Mexican colony ancestry (half of my ancestors are from there) so it is always interesting to learn new things.

This is probably why we don't have very many doctrinal changes. Joseph Smith had a lot of leeway as he was The Prophet. He was unique. Brigham Young was just an elevated apostle. When Brigham died, it took a while to redo the First Presidency because Brigham had acted a bit more than many of the apostles had liked. They didn't want another Brigham. To end polygamy, it required a lot of work and was several decades later that it finally took hold. And Wilford even had to make the statement that the Lord wouldn't let the prophet lead the church astray and even then, it wasn't enough to convince many members. The quorum removed two members who didn't agree with the change in polygamy. The quorum removed another member for breaking Law of Chastity (a quasi-polygamy situation). The change to the priesthood ban basically involved waiting for apostles to die who wouldn't agree with the change and a bunch of inner politics. The current prophets really aren't "in charge of carving out the church's doctrinal path forward" anymore. It is the 15 who are now in charge of that.

The Mexican colonies were already up and running before the first manifesto, so not sure what you mean by moving to Mexico. And I believe most of the polygamous groups are in the US and Canada. A few are in Mexico.

Do you have references for authorized sealings that late? Because my understanding is that authorization was pretty much removed by the second manifesto (1904) and only a very few after that were accepted. Brigham Young Jr were all before 1904 as he died in 1903. I think A. F. Macdonald also died in 1903. I have an ancestor polygamously married in 1904 which was accepted and another one that was sometime in the 1910s and they were excommunicated for that (both in the Mexican colonies). Authorized marriages in the 1910s and 1920s are extremely rare, in my understanding. Most of them usually weren't authorized and would trigger an excommunication once discovered (like my ancestor).

The section in the Gospel Library has links for each of those editions that all links to bible.com.

If Joseph had been asked by Hyrum to record the revelation for other reasons, I strongly suspect it would be very different. The main ideas (eternal marriage, holy spirit of promise sealings, etc) would be in there, but it would be worded different and wouldn't have been as direct to Emma. We possibly have recorded sealing ceremony language from Joseph and it contains a lot of what is in 132 - https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/revelation-27-july-1842/1. So that could have been added to D&C instead of section 132 or something similar to it.

Just to be pedantic but we don't know that Joseph Smith and Emma were sealed on that date. It is based off of Joseph's diary - https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/journal-december-1842-june-1844-book-2-10-march-1843-14-july-1843/233. All it says is "<Joseph— & J[ames] Adams [[were married]]>". It doesn't say to whom. And there is no documentation that women were even present. We assume the women were there and since James Adams only had one wife at that time and because Emma starts to be involved in ceremonies that we assume required sealings, we assume Joseph and Emma were sealed on that day. But, the very next day, it is possible that a plural sealing occurred since Mercy Fielding was sealed and her husband was dead at that time. So it must have been a posthumous sealing or she was sealed to one of the men present (or both which is the more likely situation with posthumous sealings).

The first part about diamonds is odd. Sure, the diamond industry created an artificial shortage and sure they market that diamonds are forever, but marketing is not science. One of the earliest experiments to prove what diamonds were made of was back in the 1700s when they burned a diamond. They did that to understand the composition of diamond. And they found that it behaved similar to coal, which is when we started to learn that diamond and coal were made of the same thing. So diamonds can't be forever if we have been burning diamonds. Using the diamond marketing to "debunk" science is not very good debunking. I also can't tell if the article is arguing that isotopes don't exist or that they do exist. The way it discusses carbon-14, it kind of sounds like it is a made up isotope or even a made up chemical. The problem with this is that we know of lots of isotopes. And we learned about them from weighing them as each isotope has a different weight (because of the difference in number of neutrons). So we know that carbon-14 definitely exists. It isn't a laboratory invention. It fits the patterns of hundreds of isotopes we have discovered. And these isotopes act differently. For instance, there is a substance called "heavy water". It is made up of H20 but the hydrogen is a isotope called deuterium. We know how to manufacture heavy water and even though it is water, it has slightly different characteristics that are used in different ways that normal water can't be used in. That quote is kind of funny to me. A real clock has the same problems the article is complaining about carbon dating. There are a long list of assumptions for clocks that we just accept. Clocks don't count seconds or minutes or even time. They just count the number of swings or gear shifts or vibrations of an atom (which I bet the article would not accept since it seems like atoms aren't a real thing). We then convert those counts into seconds based on assumptions of how gravity works or how the physics work. Clocks skew all the time. And we've even shown that clocks in fast moving objects (like satellites) track time differently. So, no clocks are just as problematic as carbon dating. The article is really focused on carbon-14, but we use this same process (mass spectrometer) for a host of other things. It wasn't invented for "revenue streams". It was invented to try and understand substances and what they were made of. And if the mass spectrometer was given incorrect results, it would have been tossed out. Again, the article seems to be saying that isotopes don't exist which is really odd. Radioactive decay isn't uniform. It is random. And the half lives have margin of errors because of that. For instance, carbon-14 has a half-life of 5700±30 years. We've known about radioactive decay since only the early 1900s and it was a big discovery. Until then, it was assumed that the elements (which were still being discovered) were constant and never changed. The discovery that a sample of rock generated energy by itself was shocking. And then we discovered that if you weighed the rock before and after, it weighed less. This meant that the energy leaving the rock was somehow changing the rock. The earliest method to calculate half-life is by taking a sample of known number of atoms that includes some radioactive isotopes, weigh it, wait some time for it to decay, and then weigh it again. The weight before and after will tell you how many atoms decayed (carbon-14 turns into nitrogen-14 which has a different weight). But getting the exact known number of atoms in the first sample is hard, so we do it a bunch of times to average out the possible differences. And we do it a bunch of times to account for the randomness of the decay. You can even do this experiment at home though you'll need really sensitive scales. Another way to measure is to take your sample and put a Geiger counter next to it. Then record the amount of radiation that is being emitted. Using the amount of radiation over time, you can also calculate the half life. Volcanic rocks can't be dated with carbon dating. That would have been a different dating mechanism. Carbon dating only works with living things because it assumes that living things are constantly breathing in (for plants) and consuming (for animals) new sources of carbon. So their bodies are constantly refreshing the carbon and are picking up new C14. A rock doesn't do that. Carbon dating also can only go back about 50,000 years. And it is almost always used with calibrated values. The industrial age drastically changed the amount of C14 in the atmosphere and nuclear testing in the mid 1900s changed it even more. Usually, what they will do is find tree samples with known dendrology dates and carbon date those tree samples. Then, if you want to carbon date something in the nearby area (within a few 1000 miles), you will compare the C14 rates to the tree samples with known dates. That will allow you to get some fairly precise dates (within a 10 years). If you don't have dated samples, then the dates are usually within 100 or even 1000 years. Coal and diamonds are pretty much pure carbon that are not bonded to anything. There are impurities in it but it isn't chemical bonding like a molecule. So carbon does exist in isolation and is independent. I don't know why you say water is independent since it is composed of two elements. And water has impurities just like coal and diamonds.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caster_Semenya is an example. She has "5α-Reductase 2 deficiency" and so has XY chromosome but has always been a girl. Her testosterone is closer to a male average.

Sidney Rigdon was a member of the Council of Fifty. https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/person/sidney-rigdon

I think this is one of the better studies of the angel with a sword - https://ensignpeakfoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/Encouraging-Joseph-Smith-to-Practice-Plural-Marriage-The-Accounts-of-the-Angel-with-a-Drawn-Sword.pdf And you are correct. The earliest is about 1853, though it could be a little earlier. It was 9 different people who probably had 1st hand knowledge of it. The likelihood that Joseph saw an angel who commanded him to practice polygamy is pretty high. But we don't know what exactly happened.

Snow was not recounting hearsay decades removed; she was personally involved in the early practice and regarded plural marriage as divinely mandated despite personal cost. 2. Heber C. Kimball (Apostle, First Presidency) Kimball taught publicly that Joseph Smith struggled deeply with the commandment and only proceeded after repeated angelic warnings. Paraphrase from Kimball’s teaching: Joseph Smith delayed obeying the commandment until an angel appeared with a drawn sword and threatened him with destruction if he did not proceed. Kimball framed this not as indulgence, but as reluctant obedience. 3. Brigham Young Brigham Young consistently testified that plural marriage was introduced by Joseph Smith under extraordinary divine compulsion, not personal desire. Young stated that Joseph: Found the principle abhorrent at first Attempted to avoid it Finally complied only after angelic enforcement Young explicitly referenced the drawn sword motif in multiple sermons. 4. Mary Elizabeth Rollins Lightner (plural wife) Lightner gave a detailed autobiographical account stating that Joseph told her: An angel appeared to him The angel held a drawn sword He was commanded to enter plural marriage or face destruction Her account is among the most detailed and consistent first-person recollections. 5. William Clayton (Joseph Smith’s secretary) Clayton recorded in his journals that Joseph told him: He was commanded by an angel The commandment was not optional Severe consequences were attached to refusal Clayton was present when the 1843 revelation (now Doctrine and Covenants 132) was dictated. Canonical LDS Context Doctrine and Covenants 132 While D&C 132 does not explicitly mention an angel with a sword, it repeatedly emphasizes: Divine command Severe consequences for disobedience The principle being restored through Joseph Smith specifically The angelic enforcement narrative functions as historical context, not canonized text. Scholarly and Institutional Consensus Importantly, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints does not deny this claim. Modern Church historians and official publications acknowledge that: Joseph Smith taught that plural marriage was commanded by God He resisted the commandment Angelic visitation was part of his explanation for proceeding The Church refrains from dramatizing the image but does not reject its historicity. Important Clarifications The angel is never named in surviving accounts. The language “with a sword” appears consistently, sometimes phrased as “drawn sword.” The experience is described as coercive, not persuasive. No contemporary, hostile source invented the story; it comes from insiders defending the practice. Summary Judgment Yes. According to multiple independent LDS historical sources, Joseph Smith taught that an angel with a drawn sword commanded him to practice plural marriage and threatened him with destruction if he did not comply. This claim: Is early Is consistent Comes from participants and witnesses Is acknowledged (though not emphasized) by modern LDS scholarship It was definitely a significant revelation to him. But many people who learned of polygamy while Joseph was alive were not required or forced to enter polygamy. We know of several men and women who said no to it and were still accepted in the church and even in high positions. And during Brigham's presidency, there were many who didn't practice polygamy and were never punished for it. It has never been a requirement for the temple or for membership.

Here is where the rule is written down - https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/manual/general-handbook/28?lang=eng&id=title2#title2